Phoenix (computer)

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Coordinates: 52°12′13″N 0°07′13″E / 52.20362°N 0.12023°E / 52.20362; 0.12023
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Parts of the power supply for the Phoenix computer at the Centre for Computing History

Phoenix (February 1973 – 30 September 1995) was an

Computer Laboratory. "Phoenix/MVS" was also the name of the computer's operating system, written in-house by Computer Laboratory members.[1] Its DNS hostname was phx.cam.ac.uk.[2]

Hardware

The Phoenix system was an

store, to double the amount of storage that the machine had. The petition was accepted and the extra store was delivered in September 1973.[3]

Communications

The IBM-supplied

card punches as well. Even this solution proved to be unsatisfactory, and in 1975 TCAM was replaced by Parrot, with 200 terminals connected to the PDP-11, of which 80 could be simultaneously active. For full technical details of Parrot, see the technical report by Hazel and Stoneley.[4]

Software

The staff were motivated to write their own system software for the IBM installation as a result of their dissatisfaction with IBM's own interactive command interpreter TSO. The initial product of their efforts was a Phoenix command interpreter which completely replaced the TSO command interpreter and was also available as a language for controlling batch job submissions through the use of a single IBM JCL command to invoke the Phoenix command interpreter. The Phoenix command interpreter was based on that of the Titan Multiple Access System[5] which had inline input files and was in service from 1967.

Bourne Shell
for Unix, was at Cambridge in the 1960s and early 1970s. It seems likely that some of the Bourne Shell's constructs in Unix also derived from the Titan command interpreter.

GEC's OS4000 JCL was based on the Phoenix command interpreter.

Upgrades

By 1973 Phoenix had a thousand megabytes of disk space.[citation needed] In 1982 it was upgraded to an IBM 3081D, and in 1989 to an IBM 3084Q.[citation needed]

Decommissioning

The system was decommissioned 24 years after its installation, on 30 September 1995 at 09:17 (by its own clock).[6]

Help command

Phoenix/MVS is remembered for the responses that it gave to its HELP command. One such was the response to the command HELP GOD, to which Phoenix/MVS would reply "Deities must be invoked directly and not via Phoenix MVS."[7]

Games

Acheton system[1]
Game Year Authors' names (Phoenix login names in parentheses)
Acheton
 1978 Jon Thackray (JGT1), David Seal (DJS6), and Jonathan R. Partington (JRP1)
Murdac 1982 Jonathan R. Partington
Avon 1982 Jonathan R. Partington
Brand X 1979 Jonathan Mestel (AJM8) and Peter Killworth (PDK1)
Hamil 1982 Jonathan R. Partington
Quondam 1980 Rod Underwood (RU10)
Hezarin 1980 Steve Tinney, Alex Shipp, and Jon Thackray
Xeno 1989 Jonathan Mestel
Fyleet 1985 Jonathan R. Partington
Crobe 1986 Jonathan R. Partington
Sangraal 1987 Jonathan R. Partington
Nidus 1987 Adam Atkinson (AJFA1)
Parc 1983 John Rennie (JR26)
Xerb unknown Andrew Lipson (ASL1)
Spycatcher circa 1988 Jonathan R. Partington and Jon Thackray

One recreational activity on Phoenix was the playing of

Acheton.[1][8]

Acheton was created by two Cambridge graduate students, Jon Thackray and David Seal, in 1978–1979, and expanded over the ensuring two years with the aid of Jonathan Partington. It was written with the aid of a game assembler, which, unlike the contemporary

ZIL game assembler from Infocom, was freely available for use by all users of Phoenix between 1980 and 1995.[1]

Several large early British games developed on Phoenix were sold commercially for microcomputers by

Z-Machine
.

The commercial release of Brand X was

Philosopher's Quest.[1]

Bulletin board

Phoenix also hosted a lively bulletin board named GROGGS,[6] which fostered the community spirit amongst the machine's users. After Phoenix was decommissioned, GROGGS migrated to a Unix system, and survived until August 2020.[9] A second, more structured bulletin board, ZINQUE, was popularly held to stand for 'Zinque Is Not Quite Unix Either'.[10]

Wake

Phoenix inspired great affection in its users, to such an extent that a

newsgroup called "ucam.phx.nostalgia" was also created for reminiscences.[2]

Current location

The IBM 3084 was taken out by Prof. Jim Austin after it was shut down. It is now on display at the Computer Sheds computer museum in East Yorkshire, UK.[11]

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 0-262-63318-3
    .
  2. ^ a b Michael Seán Grant (23 January 2007). "phx.cam.ac.uk".
  3. ^ "Newsletter #215". University of Cambridge Computing Service. 2003.[permanent dead link]
  4. University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory
    . UCAM-CL-TR-5. Retrieved 22 January 2010.
  5. ^ Titan (1963 computer)
  6. ^ a b Richard Watts (7 April 1998). "An introduction to RGTP GROGGS".
  7. ^ Richard Gibbons (11 September 1999). "Feedback". New Scientist. No. 2203. p. 92.
  8. ISBN 0-9713119-0-0
    .
  9. ^ Ian Jackson and Martin Hardcastle (29 September 2004). "GROGGS — General Purpose Reverse-Ordered Gossip Gathering System".
  10. ^ Colin Bell. "ZINQUE index".
  11. ^ Jim Austin. "CSHEDS index".
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